


Welcome to the Show

by tempeck16



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Bickering, Crack, Fluff, Gen or Pre-Slash, Kaner and Tazer - Freeform, M/M, Responsibility, Tags Are Hard, We Miss You Sharpy, hard decisions, inspired by a post, my tags are a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 05:31:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6040113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempeck16/pseuds/tempeck16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having the 'A' is a great honor but also a great responsibility. Sometimes Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith regret their choices. </p><p>(A.K.A the time <em>somebody<em> had to explain what even Kaner and Tazer are, to the rookies)</em></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the Show

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't there for the beginning of the season so I'm not sure who our starting rookies were, so I just picked three and went with it; this is set in the beginning of the 2015 season. This story was inspired by an amazing post that had the most incredible tag. The credit for the tag and a special line in this fic goes to @blue--spruce and @carnavaldhiver for the actual post and gifs attached. Thanks you guys!!!
> 
> GO HERE TO SEE THE POST: http://blue--spruce.tumblr.com/

“Kaner and Tazer…. Are. Weird.”

“They aren’t weird.”

“…They aren’t weird, they’re just different.”

“Goddammit.”

Seabs flopped unceremoniously down onto a bleacher. Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith had spent the last hour and a half trying to figure out how to talk about their resident ‘odd couple’ with the newbies. October was utter hell and it had nothing to do with the fact that summer was over and training camp had started. It was all to do with the fact that ever since… ever since Sharpy had been traded, introducing the baby Hawks to the Blackhawks way of life fell to the two ‘A’s, and the other senior players.

So far, it was not going well.

Of course this reprieve of calm talking beat what had happened when they first saw each other walking into the arena that morning. As soon as Seabs had seen his best friend his finger had gradually made its way to his nose only to be slapped away followed by a tirade of why ‘Nose does NOT go!’ in this situation. Duncs had looked regretful seconds after that, watching his hand flex and muttering something about missing Sharpy.

“Alright,” Seabs sighed after they had both calmed down from a rigorous rock-paper-scissors match that ended with a draw and few cheap shots to some ribs, “We can’t start it like that; we just need them to be normal for like five seconds.”

Duncs glanced up from where he had his head buried in his gloves. They had decided to get to the rink early to go over their problems, but upon stepping into the arena and seeing the untarnished ice that they hadn’t gotten to touch since June, the urge to throw some pucks around was too tempting. However before either of them could touch the ice they decided that it was probably best to at least discuss their issue first.

“Normal?” Duncs asked, “I would settle for silence. They don’t know what ‘normal’ is!”

Seabs sat up and his gaze was immediately drawn to the vast expanse of clear, clean ice that had yet to be touched. The feeling of home welled up in his chest and he glanced over at his best friend. An idea hit him like a freight train, he felt momentarily ashamed of his plan, but eh, what’s the worst that could happen?

“We could… we could just delegate.”

Duncs glanced up through his bulky gloved fingers to squint at his fellow D-man. “Delegate?”

“Yeah,” Seabs stood and a lifetime of walking in skates propelled him to start pacing in front of his best friend. “Delegate, like just give it to-”

“I know what delegate means Brent.” Duncs groaned in exasperation. “I don’t think anyone would take this.”

“We have to give them a choice?” Seabs groused continuing to pace back and forth.

“Who would even-”

As if by summed by the Gods resident chatterbox and Mutt, Andrew Shaw, busted into the arena like a bull in a china shop. He spotted the two Alternates seconds after and full puppy mode switched on.

“Duncs! Seabs!” Was all the warning either of them got before a celly like hug engulfed them both. Despite the mass of babbling puppy they found in their arms, both Seabs and Duncs found a moment to spare a grin over Shawsy’s shoulders.

“Hey kid,” Seabs broke in when Shawsy stopped talking for air. “How’s it going?”

They had all seen each other a few weeks before for some meetings with management and the annual barbeque that used to be held at Sharpy’s every year, but had been shifted to Jonny’s house when Sharpy had gone to Dallas and Tazer had bought a house of his own.

Despite having only been separated for a few weeks, it was always good to be reunited.

Shawsy pulled them both down the hall that lead back to the locker room. They could both hear the excitement in the younger man’s voice and silently communicated that they wouldn’t foist their burden onto the exuberant puppy.

Shawsy’s spirited telling of what the rest of his summer was like was interrupted by the overlapping voices and pure craziness that was the Blackhawks roster that came spilling out of their locker room. Pushing through the doors and seeing the people that they called family and spent nine months out of the year with, momentarily distracted Seabs and Duncs from their problems and they got lost in greeting their brothers back to their home.

Hossa’s dry humor, Crow’s loud laughter, and Hammer trading stories about Theo distracted them from their resident ‘odd couple’ stalking into the room already at each other’s throats.

“… If you were just ready when I came to get you!” Jonny fumed as he followed his ex-roommate into the locker room.

“Holy shit Tazer, we’re not even late! Try pulling the stick out of your ass, it’s the _first day_ of training camp.” Patrick grumbled back throwing out an arm to off balance Jonny. Tazer rolled his eyes and bumped Kaner back and then turned to do a truly spectacular move to avoid the punch that was aimed at his shoulder.

Being old hats at the ‘Kaner and Tazer’ show, most of the guys ignored them, some of them sending amused looks at the two before turning back to their own conversations. Eye rolls were the general consensus when it came to those two.    

Frozen smiles graced Seabs and Duncs’ faces as their time had run out. Seabs intercepted Jonny from retaliating by stealing Kaner’s hat, and by some grace of God Shawsy picked up on the plan and pulled Kaner into a side hug while chirping him about whatever was on his mind.

Step One:  separation.

When they are on the ice there was never enough room, and the fact that Kaner and Tazer actively sought each other out on the bench prevented the rest of the guys from finding enough room to separate them, but if they could just get this under control before it started, maybe introducing the rookies to the Blackhawks wouldn’t be a total disaster.

Steps two and three involved getting them to their separate stalls and then out onto the ice before anything could escalate. ‘The plan’ was derailed by Coach Q and Stan Bowman walking in with the rest of the training staff, and a few new faces trailing behind them.

Time had run out.

“Boys, welcome back, I’d like to introduce your rookies this year. We’ve got Erik Gustaffson coming to us from Djurgården's,” Which prompted claps and the widest smile Krugs could manage. “We scooped him from the Oilers and now he’s our problem.” The twinkle in Q’s eye caught Gus off guard, but it went a long way to making the rookie more comfortable in his skin.

Q turned and pointed to another terribly young looking person, “You boys should remember Rasmussen from Rockford, we got him signed,” the interrupted calls of ‘Moose’ rang throughout the locker room making the twenty-four year old fidget but smile all the same.

“And then we’ve got our top interest from Russia, Artemi Panarin.” A translator dogged Pan’s movements, speaking quickly to him as Q gave his introduction. Pan waved shyly before turning his attention back to Q who went on to say that there were many more rookies that were going to be joining them that week, but the three present were the ones joining their immediate roster.

Q spoke of what was going to happen for the next few days of training camp, he stepped back as the trainers and Stan Bowman said their piece, and finally Q finished with telling everyone to suit up and get out on the ice.

“Welcome to The Show, boys.” Q called, departing with some of the coaching staff to get ready for training.

Jonny made it a point to greet all of the new kids as he made the rounds welcoming his team back for another training camp.

Kaner seemed to gravitate toward the rookies and ended up having a stilted but entertaining conversation with their new Russian member via translator. It was surprising, but it seemed like even when the translator got stuck on a word that didn’t translate over well from one language to the other, Kaner and Pan had very little difficulties understanding each other.

Things were going well while everyone suited up, making sure that the rookies found their stalls and their sweaters. Things were running so smoothly, Seabs and Duncs all but forgot about their problem. Jonny and Patrick were fine, they were talking to each other; they were talking to everyone. Patrick had held out his hand only to have Jonny throw a stick of deodorant from across the room without even saying a word. It was those moments that made the rookies stop and watch the two with wide eyes and open mouths.

The ‘Kaner and Tazer’ show was kind of cool at first.

Unfortunately, that all ended when they got in the rink. As soon as the skates hit the fresh ice and the first drills of the new seasons training camp started; Armageddon reigned down in droves to the tune of yelling and snarky sarcastic comments made by Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.

The ping-ponging from the peanut gallery made up of rookies and guys on the team that somehow forgot what this was like, was almost enough to make Seabs, Duncs, Hossa, Hammer, Crow, and Shawsy not want to explain… but Sharpy was gone, and somebody had to.

Seabs and Duncs skated over to where the trio of rookies had stopped to stare as their new Captain and one of the top right wingers in the NHL stood at arm’s length to yell as loud as they could at each other about something only they thought was important.

Hesitant smiles, that really looked more like grimaces, fell upon the two Alternate Captain’s faces as they tried to tune out the loud bickering coming from their teammates. They faced the gaggle of rookies who still had wide eyes and open mouths, but for an entirely different reason now.

“Okay so… Kaner and Tazer…. Are. Weird.”

“They aren’t weird.”

“…They aren’t weird, they’re just different.”

“Goddammit.”

 

-fini-

**Author's Note:**

> Thank You for reading, please comment or kudos if you liked it!


End file.
